PAGE ONE -- S.F. Homeless Sent to Hotels With Fire Hazards

William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, March 28, 1996

San Francisco's Department of Social Services is routinely placing homeless people in residential hotels throughout the city that have fire code violations, according to a Chronicle investigation of Fire Department records.

Those documents show that of the 20 hotels in the city's emergency shelter program, eight have been cited for fire code violations that have not been corrected as of February, when the latest fire inspection records were available.

Another eight hotels have not even been inspected by the Fire Department during the last year, as required by state law. Only four of the program's 20 hotels passed fire inspections.

Fire Department has failed to inspect thousands of hotels and apartment houses in the city in recent years. In more than half of the buildings that were inspected last year, at least one fire violation was found.

Dorothy Enisman, who runs the city's emergency hotel program, said yesterday that she was surprised to learn about the violations in the hotels used by her program and asked to be sent a list of the hotels and the violations immediately.

Enisman said her department pulled one South of Market hotel out of the shelter program Tuesday after learning from The Chronicle that the hotel had been cited for 12 fire hazards, ranging from barred escape windows and nonfunctional exit doors to uncertified sprinkler and alarm systems.

"We sent inspectors out there immediately, then pulled the hotel from our list," she explained.

Enisman said that under a 1993 agreement, the Fire Department is required to notify her office within three days of finding any serious or imminent hazards. "I've never heard from them about any of these hotels," she said.

She said she also had assumed that the hotels were being inspected by the Fire Department annually as required by state law.

Phone calls to the manager of the Fire Department's inspection program were not returned yesterday.

400 PEOPLE PLACED WEEKLY

Under the city's program, about 400 homeless people are placed every week in the 20 listed hotels. Enisman said that they include "medically fragile" people who are released from the hospital with nowhere to go and would otherwise be kept in costly hospital beds at San Francisco General Hospital. The Department of Social Services also places 250 homeless people in the hotels each week while their applications for General Assistance are being processed.

Enisman said that inspectors from the city's Department of Public Health inspect the hotels monthly and building inspectors check for housing code violations several times a year.

"If a hotel does not pass the inspections," she said, "we stop sending people there until the violations are corrected. If they fail inspections three times in a year, we will not use that hotel again.

"Is it safe?" she added. "That's our bottom line."

CASE OF ONE HOTEL

Of the eight hotels on the homeless list that were cited for fire code violations, most had serious ones, according to Fire Department inspection records. One of the buildings, the Mission Hotel at 520 South Van Ness, was cited for four violations -- obstructed exit pathways, rooftop door improperly secured, exit doors nonfunctional and no five-year sprinkler certification.

In 1993, the hotel, which is owned by Chhotubhai (Charlie) Patel, was cited for so many building code violations that the city pulled out all 60 residents who had been assigned to the hotel while the violations were corrected.

Patel owns a number of other residential hotels in the city, one of which was closed after a fire in 1993 that left one resident dead and 13 others injured. The hotel, which was on Folsom Street, had been cited for several code violations, and an administrative hearing had been scheduled for the building on the morning of the fire.

Patel could not be reached for comment yesterday. But his attorney, Richard Stratton, said that often when code violations are cited in Patel's hotels, they are corrected within days and the inspectors do not get back to clear the violations from the records until months later.

The Mission Hotel was inspected in September, when the four fire code violations were recorded. A notice of violation was sent out October 18. But as of February, none of the violations had been corrected, according to Fire Department records. An assistant manager at the hotel, who asked not to be identified, said that the sprinkler system was fixed and new sprinkler heads installed within the last month. "He is slow," the manager said of the man who leases the hotel from Patel. "He won't spend any money until he has to. He's like any businessman."

The man said that he was not aware of any other outstanding fire code violations.

Randy Shaw, who works at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, said yesterday that building code inspectors often check for fire code violations in these hotels. "These are the most inspected buildings in the city," he said.

He said the city should be streamlining its inspection effort and not put any more money into Fire Department inspections, which often duplicate those conducted by building inspectors.

"The Fire Department doesn't do any follow-up anyway," Shaw said. "So why have duplication of the bureaucracy?"